Wrapping up the series from my October visit to Ricketts Glen, which has dragged on for too long now! Here at long last are the shots that draw visitors to the glen, featuring one of its many waterfalls in full autumn glory.
Despite the very solid photographic advice to work a scene from different spots, I chose this one location to setup my tripod, and merely varied my height, zoom, and angle on the falls to capture the images above.
I’ve photographed waterfalls across the northeast, and they don’t call to me the way they did in the past. In truth, I’ve become a bit bored with them, and it was only the confluence of autumn color and a stunning early morning that drew me down to the park, so my focus wasn’t on capturing shots of the falls themselves so much as the falls as an element within a larger scene.
I liked the line of the creek against the lines of the trees, at once both parallel and in opposition; I liked the solidity of the landscape against the accentuated motion of the water; the contrast in color between the rich green moss and the autumn leaves. The falls were part of the math, but it was the large mossy boulder bottom left that attracted the bulk of my attention and I tried different framing and apertures, using it as an anchoring element.
The images above survived my culling process, and while some of them are subtle variations, I wasn’t able to decide between them.